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NATCHEZ—Adams County Board of Supervisors President Kevin Wilson said he expects officials with United Infrastructure to attend the next supervisors meeting on Nov. 18 to discuss the continued poor garbage collection service provided to county residents.

Wilson and other supervisors have received numerous complaints about the county’s garbage collection services since United Infrastructure Services was granted the contract in a 3 to 2 vote in March 2023.

That contract increased the garbage collection fee for county residents by $20 per month, up to $35 per month. Wilson said the new contract is costing Adams County an additional $600,000 per year.

In June of this year, the supervisors agreed to send a letter to officials at United Infrastructure, putting them on notice of violations to its contract with the county and asking the company to send representatives to a county meeting to discuss the issues.

County Attorney Scott Slover had to send the company a second letter before it responded. Slover said at the last county meeting that the company responded and offered several dates for someone from the company to meet with supervisors. However, none of the dates offered by United Infrastructure were meeting dates.

“We told them they needed to be here today or at the next meeting on Nov. 18. I assume they will be here on the 18th,” Wilson said. “It’s been almost four months since we sent that first letter. We told them we were only going to discuss it on days of our meetings.”

District 4 Supervisor Ricky Gray suggested the county call a special meeting on one of the dates United Infrastructure officials said they would be available.

“The most important thing is that they are here to discuss if we have to call a meeting to do it,” Gray said.

“I don’t know about you, but I am pretty busy most of the time working for a living. They have had four months to come to discuss this. We have had eight meetings since that letter. I am sure they are not so busy that they can’t come up here,” Wilson said.

“I am tired of this. They are only pickup once a week in most cases. Our citizens aren’t getting what they should be getting. We are paying all this money for them not to do what they are supposed to be doing. It is time for them to show up,” he said.

Wilson said the issue needs to be discussed during a public meeting.

United Infrastructure is the predecessor to Metro Services, which was the county’s garbage collection contractor until December 2022, when it filed for bankruptcy and abruptly stopped collecting county residents’ garbage.

Metro restructured under bankruptcy protection, forming the new United Infrastructure.

The new United Infrastructure and Arrow Disposal Services bid for the county contract in March 2023. The most economical bid for the county would have been Arrow Disposal’s offer of garbage collection one day per week.

Hutchins and Gray were adamant that any garbage collection contract must include picking up garbage twice weekly. Nonetheless, one of the primary complaints from county residents is that their garbage is only collected one day per week and not on the day it is supposed to be collected.

In addition, the company is allegedly not using proper equipment — or equipment it agreed to purchase in the contract — to collect garbage. Photos and videos sent to supervisors show garbage being put in the beds of pickup trucks or into a dumpster that is being hauled by a truck.